The Dream Man wrote:Right after Sarah Palmer tells Maj. Briggs her message and we see Dale walking down the hallway, according to Netflix the LMFAP says "I'm waiting for you." Is that really from the LMFAP? It sounds nothing him.

Wow! I'd heard the "Windom Earle" and "Laura Palmer" explanations before, but never this one! The voice does sound like Windom's (not so much in the RR, but immediately after), but I've never quite liked the idea that it's him. Why is he using Sarah Palmer as a vessel? And why is he inviting Maj. Briggs to the Lodge? The most logical explanation is that it's Laura, trying to make someone aware of Cooper's situation through the person on the "outside" she's most connected to (wouldn't it have been fantastic if season 2 had used - but not overused - this device to keep the Palmers active?). But then why, when we cut to the corridor, do we hear the "Windom" Lodge voice (at least, certainly not Lodge Laura's). Oh well, I guess it's open to interpretation, which is generally how I like my Twin Peaks haha...

One thought about the Little Man conveying a message to Briggs through Sarah. This would be generally consistent with his activities in Fire Walk With Me, where he uses Annie - simultaneously in two different times - to convey the message that the good Cooper is in the Lodge (and thus, Bob is out in the world). At least I'm pretty sure it's the Little Man, since both times the green ring accompanies the message and almost seems to symbolize the passage of this information about Bob's whereabouts (just as it does when the one-armed man flashes the ring in traffic and says "it's your father!" or when we first see the ring on Teresa's finger after she sees Leland's discomfort).

Sarah Palmer was said to be attuned to certain frequencies, which is why she sees BOB, so she may have been a pragmatic choice. There’s also the possibility that Lynch simply wanted a reason to put her in the series one last time. As for Earle luring Briggs to the lodge, he certainly has a fixation with Briggs (he kidnapped him, after all), and he’s quite cocky about being able to defeat Coop, so why not defeat another paragon of wholesomeness at the same time? Further, if Briggs really does have some special connection to the white lodge, then this may provide even more motivation to do him harm. The “I’m waiting for you” part sounds like a taunt, which fits well with Earle’s style. I don't get the sense that it's Laura, either aurally or logically, but I won't completely dismiss the idea. If it's not Earle, going simply by the audio, my second guess would indeed be the LMFAP, but that doesn't make much sense to me story-wise.

Though the voice is quite croaky, and may even have been run through some sort of distorting filter, it would be interesting to hear the audio reversed. For all I know it could be Grace Zabriskie’s distorted backwards speech.

The Dream Man wrote:Right after Sarah Palmer tells Maj. Briggs her message and we see Dale walking down the hallway, according to Netflix the LMFAP says "I'm waiting for you." Is that really from the LMFAP? It sounds nothing him.

It’s understandably confusing for whoever closed-captioned Episode 29 but Netflix definitely seems to have screwed that up. If you stand back a bit and just contextualize within the general plot up to that point I would think there can be very little doubt that the voice beckoning from the lodge would be Windom’s. Some viewers might be getting tripped up since the scene was a Lynch contribution and since he’s thought not to have been all that keen on the Windom character or story, based on the large sections he excised from the script. But when I read though the original script alongside the episode as filmed I don’t exactly get that impression – it seems more as though Lynch simply had a different vision for the character. He seems quite comfortable with Windom luring Cooper to the lodge and foolishly attempting to harness its power – that remains the premise behind 29, even after the Lynch alterations – and then retains him in the red room sequence. He doesn’t give him many new lines for all the ones taken out, but maybe that’s just the point. Less was more. David Lynch probably felt (and many viewers may agree) that the character’s potential had begun to be squandered and that the writing in 29’s script and the prevous episodes was just getting too florid and bombastic to really do things justice.

I would love to see the S2 fanedit discussed here http://www.dugpa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2128#p24747 where a poster named “uncle_fugly” says: "I eliminated nearly all of Windom Earle's scenes. Gone are his silly costumes and the scenes with him and Leo at the cabin. By leaving him unseen and in the background, he's MUCH more menacing.” I imagine this would be more akin to what we ultimately got in 29.

The Dream Man wrote:Right after Sarah Palmer tells Maj. Briggs her message and we see Dale walking down the hallway, according to Netflix the LMFAP says "I'm waiting for you." Is that really from the LMFAP? It sounds nothing him.

It’s understandably confusing for whoever closed-captioned Episode 29 but Netflix definitely seems to have screwed that up. If you stand back a bit and just contextualize within the general plot up to that point I would think there can be very little doubt that the voice beckoning from the lodge would be Windom’s. Some viewers might be getting tripped up since the scene was a Lynch contribution and since he’s thought not to have been all that keen on the Windom character or story, based on the large sections he excised from the script. But when I read though the original script alongside the episode as filmed I don’t exactly get that impression – it seems more as though Lynch simply had a different vision for the character. He seems quite comfortable with Windom luring Cooper to the lodge and foolishly attempting to harness its power – that remains the premise behind 29, even after the Lynch alterations – and then retains him in the red room sequence. He doesn’t give him many new lines for all the ones taken out, but maybe that’s just the point. Less was more. David Lynch probably felt (and many viewers may agree) that the character’s potential had begun to be squandered and that the writing in 29’s script and the prevous episodes was just getting too florid and bombastic to really do things justice.

I would love to see the S2 fanedit discussed here http://www.dugpa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2128#p24747 where a poster named “uncle_fugly” says: "I eliminated nearly all of Windom Earle's scenes. Gone are his silly costumes and the scenes with him and Leo at the cabin. By leaving him unseen and in the background, he's MUCH more menacing.” I imagine this would be more akin to what we ultimately got in 29.

I had a feeling that it was Windom, not only from the voice, but his game playing and luring of Dale to the Lodge.

That edit sounds very interesting. It's hard to imagine all the scenes with Windom gone, especially after watching the show as many times as I have, but I can definitely see how that would make him seem much more evil in the end.

p-air wrote:Some viewers might be getting tripped up since the scene was a Lynch contribution and since he’s thought not to have been all that keen on the Windom character or story, based on the large sections he excised from the script. But when I read though the original script alongside the episode as filmed I don’t exactly get that impression – it seems more as though Lynch simply had a different vision for the character. He seems quite comfortable with Windom luring Cooper to the lodge and foolishly attempting to harness its power – that remains the premise behind 29, even after the Lynch alterations – and then retains him in the red room sequence. He doesn’t give him many new lines for all the ones taken out, but maybe that’s just the point. Less was more. David Lynch probably felt (and many viewers may agree) that the character’s potential had begun to be squandered and that the writing in 29’s script and the prevous episodes was just getting too florid and bombastic to really do things justice.

I could've sworn I responded to this yesterday, but my post is gone! Maybe Windom Earle stole it...

I think Lynch definitely was not keen on Windom Earle, based on his statements to Greg Olson and Martha Nochimson among others. It could just be revisionism on his part (like saying he left season 2 to direct Wild at Heart) but given how inconsistent this type of villain is with his other films (Baron Harkonnen is the only Windom-like Lynch villain that comes to mind) and how consistent the idea of Windom is with Frost's Sherlock/Moriarty idea it seems like a Frost addition that contributed to Lynch's disillusionment with Twin Peaks. It definitely takes the show in a worldly/genre direction and further from Lynch's vision for TP as an essentially self-contained spiritual/social microcosm.

As for including the broad plot contours of ep. 29, I think that was inevitable. He had to find his own way to get there, but details like Annie & Windom leading Coop to the Lodge, or Lodge being a physical place, or the concept of the Black vs. White Lodge at all, or Coop ending up apparently "possessed" by Bob were too ingrained (either in what came before or what was intended to come after) for Lynch to truly dispose of. The details and location he could play with, and did, but for all his improvisations Lynch tended to respect the larger processes at work. What's more baffling, of course, is that he didn't try to have a stronger hand in the storytelling decisions himself, instead of intervening after the fact (or withdrawing altogether), but those questions have been asked many times before and we're all no closer to answers haha.

In fact this line of thought is interesting and I'm going to start a separate thread on it...

LostInTheMovies wrote:I think Lynch definitely was not keen on Windom Earle, based on his statements to Greg Olson and Martha Nochimson among others.

You have done some extra homework there… I wasn’t aware DL had discussed Windom Earle in any interviews. In that case, if he generally disliked the character, that makes the “rescue” job of 29 all the more impressive as by the end of the episode Windom and his story seem to me thoroughly “Lynchified” along with all the others !!

LostInTheMovies wrote:I think Lynch definitely was not keen on Windom Earle, based on his statements to Greg Olson and Martha Nochimson among others.

You have done some extra homework there… I wasn’t aware DL had discussed Windom Earle in any interviews. In that case, if he generally disliked the character, that makes the “rescue” job of 29 all the more impressive as by the end of the episode Windom and his story seem to me thoroughly “Lynchified” along with all the others !!

I do not know if he ever flat-out said "I don't like Windom Earle" but Greg Olson reports that he bluntly stated "Windom Earle was all Mark Frost." And Martha Nochimson has said "David Lynch hates Windom Earle" although I don't know if that was surmised based on his reactions to the topic or explicitly stated. It doesn't seem like something he would ever articulate that way, although I can imagine him suggesting as much. I do know Frost has taken credit for Earle in interviews and positioned him as Moriarty to Cooper's Sherlock.

Now I could have sworn for the life of me that Kenneth Welsh stated somewhere that he didn't think Lynch liked the character very much but I can't find that quote anywhere and it isn't suggested by anything else I've read in which te actor discusses working with Lynch, so I may have just imagined this haha. I only mention it in case I'm wrong and it is out there somewhere and someone can provide a source. But I think maybe I'm mixing it up with something someone else said or something.

Still I take your point that the character simply isn’t very Lynchian. Although, it’s worth mentioning: he probably could have been. Presumably at the very beginning he was a blank slate. But at some point – really even before the introduction onscreen – the writers seem to have gone down a certain road with the writing and the characterization. For me he’s definitely the most frustrating character on the show. That said, he has a few really great scenes and I dig the way he’s used in 29.

p-air wrote:Still I take your point that the character simply isn’t very Lynchian. Although, it’s worth mentioning: he probably could have been. Presumably at the very beginning he was a blank slate. But at some point – really even before the introduction onscreen – the writers seem to have gone down a certain road with the writing and the characterization. For me he’s definitely the most frustrating character on the show. That said, he has a few really great scenes and I dig the way he’s used in 29.

He gets better as it goes along. Around 23-24 he seems to tie in better with the other stories, in 27 he has some of his best scenes (although he also dresses as a horse) and in 28 he has that great moment with the teeth and makeup.

But for me the problem is even more fundamental than execution: he never really seems like he belongs in this world. I love the way the first season establishes Twin Peaks as a self-contained universe with Cooper the only outsider (other than the comic-relief parade of European businessmen). When season 2 drags in Josie's past, and Windom Earle, and (God forbid) James' road trip and even to a certain extent all the paranormal Project Blue Book-type references (fun as they can be) it starts to lose a little of what made it special to me.

I actually like Frost's idea of making Cooper more flawed and haunted as the show progresses, but ideally it would occur because of what was happening in Twin Peaks itself. He could still have had some trouble in his past but bringing in a crazy mentor-turned-nemesis just doesn't feel very organic with how the show began. But of course it's all 20/20.

OK,Bob wrote:Earlier in the episode, I'm almost certain that Josie's drawer-pull-wailing is mixed into the squeak of the truck door closing as Earle is about to lead Annie to the grove.

I checked it out and, man, I think I heard that too!I listened to it over and over again, and sometimes I couldn't get my brains to notice that, but a few times I really think I heard it.

LostInTheMovies wrote:Why is he using Sarah Palmer as a vessel? And why is he inviting Maj. Briggs to the Lodge?

I think he happened to use Sarah because she is one of the gifted people. I don't think he necessarily used her intentionally. Maybe he just sent the message out there, and whoever happens to have the connection to visions and stuff like that, gets the message. It's not like there are many people in Twin Peaks who have the gift.

What comes to Major Briggs, I think Windom got a kick out of the idea of luring Briggs, the man who had been to the White Lodge, and the man who was once captured by Windom, into the Black Lodge. Windom wanted the soul of Cooper. Cooper is a good guy. I don't think he wanted his soul just out of revenge, but he wanted a pure and innocent soul to own, and to possibly destroy. I bet Briggs also had a soul so pure that Windom would love to snatch it to himself, also to possibly destroy it.

EDIT:oh, Jasper said it better.I should've just continue reading as this was already answered to you

One thought about the Little Man conveying a message to Briggs through Sarah. This would be generally consistent with his activities in Fire Walk With Me, where he uses Annie - simultaneously in two different times - to convey the message that the good Cooper is in the Lodge (and thus, Bob is out in the world). At least I'm pretty sure it's the Little Man, since both times the green ring accompanies the message and almost seems to symbolize the passage of this information about Bob's whereabouts (just as it does when the one-armed man flashes the ring in traffic and says "it's your father!" or when we first see the ring on Teresa's finger after she sees Leland's discomfort).

I don't think The Little Man used Annie to convey the message. I think the ring shows the connection between people, and the connection with people and the otherwold. It shows that what Mike is yelling, has tons of important weight to it.

I think it was Annie herself who brought the message. I think she was still partly connected to the timeless zone of the Lodge. Maybe Cooper was able to send the message to Annie, and Annie told it forward to Laura.

I wouldn't be surprised if we would see either in the season 3 or in the book Mark Frost is writing a situation where the good Dale is trapped in the Lodge and he sends the message to Annie. I can't really see any reason the Little Man would give this information to anyone. I don't think the Little Man has any intention to help Cooper out of the Lodge.

By the way, it's odd that Frank Silva didn't play his scene backwards. He certainly acts as if he would also have this odd feeling to his movements and voice, but he clearly just acts it normally. This can be proven by playing the audio of that scene backwards. When I first noticed it, I thought that maybe they tried to make Bob different from the other entities by giving him a sound of his own. Sure, Bob sounds normal in all the other episodes he talks in, but in Black Lodge he clearly tries to sound "backwards-forwards". Maybe he had a hard time learning to speak like that. If so, he sure learned to do it when filming FWWM (the Missing Pieces scene had a GREAT "backwards-forwards" performance by Frank!)

Rami Airola wrote:I think the ring shows the connection between people, and the connection with people and the otherwold.

I generally agree that it is used to show connections (and it certainly links people to other possibilities, both otherworldly and within the physical world). But it is consistently linked with Mike and the Little Man (who are themselves linked) in Fire Walk With Me. The only character even more explicitly linked to the ring is Teresa.

I think it was Annie herself who brought the message. I think she was still partly connected to the timeless zone of the Lodge. Maybe Cooper was able to send the message to Annie, and Annie told it forward to Laura.

It could certainly be her own initiative. It's tough to judge because she's so hard to read in those Lodge scenes in the finale. She mostly plays as if she's just a projection of Cooper; from the moment Windom hypnotizes her through to the rest of the times we will see her (including in FWWM & the Missing Pieces) I'm never quite sure what was going on with her - when she's a conduit, when she's a projection, when she's acting of her own initiative, etc. I suppose that speaks to her role generally being a bit underwritten (although I kind of like her in ep. 24 - 28 and feel she had potential) so that Lynch kind of just "used" her rather than fleshed her out. Dunno. I hope Heather Graham participates in 2016 so we can find out more.

I can't really see any reason the Little Man would give this information to anyone. I don't think the Little Man has any intention to help Cooper out of the Lodge.

He may not care very much about helping Cooper out of the Lodge (or he may) but he certainly seems to care about reigning in Bob. In this case the two goals are coincident.

LostInTheMovies wrote:He may not care very much about helping Cooper out of the Lodge (or he may) but he certainly seems to care about reigning in Bob. In this case the two goals are coincident.

By sending this message though, he ultimately is helping Cooper out in a sense, right? That is, if the right people get it. What's his reasoning? That Coop is the only one that could possibly stop Bob?

Earle surmises from Briggs that fear unlocks the Black Lodge. Luring Briggs to the lodge and using his fear against him could be a key to defeating him spiritually and claiming his soul (and would perhaps be a way of making a strike against the White Lodge). Earle terrorizes Annie and uses her fear to unlock the lodge.

"I am Windham Earle!"

Earle also likely uses fear (and poetic hypnotism, and sycamore grove proximity) to defeat Annie before he even gets her into the lodge proper, so that she'll be helpless and useful as a tool with which to manipulate Cooper.

Rami Airola wrote:

Jasper wrote:it would be interesting to hear the audio reversed. For all I know it could be Grace Zabriskie’s distorted backwards speech.

Nice, thanks. Definitely sounds most like Earle (though it doesn't include the first part, and LostInTheMovies mentioned that he thought the first part sounded different).

Rami Airola wrote:By the way, it's odd that Frank Silva didn't play his scene backwards. He certainly acts as if he would also have this odd feeling to his movements and voice, but he clearly just acts it normally. This can be proven by playing the audio of that scene backwards. When I first noticed it, I thought that maybe they tried to make Bob different from the other entities by giving him a sound of his own. Sure, Bob sounds normal in all the other episodes he talks in, but in Black Lodge he clearly tries to sound "backwards-forwards". Maybe he had a hard time learning to speak like that. If so, he sure learned to do it when filming FWWM (the Missing Pieces scene had a GREAT "backwards-forwards" performance by Frank!)

I noticed that his speech in the lodge didn't seem to be legitimately reversed. I too assumed he had trouble with it (it can't be easy), so they just kind of faked it, which works well enough. To be fair, he does act in reverse in the lodge, just apparently not for the speaking parts.

LostInTheMovies wrote:He may not care very much about helping Cooper out of the Lodge (or he may) but he certainly seems to care about reigning in Bob. In this case the two goals are coincident.

By sending this message though, he ultimately is helping Cooper out in a sense, right? That is, if the right people get it. What's his reasoning? That Coop is the only one that could possibly stop Bob?

EDIT: My answers are getting convoluted so I'll try to keep it simple...

Yes, this would be helping Cooper out, though I suspect that's a byproduct of the larger goal (reigning in Bob).

But it's not about unleashing Cooper in order to then stop Bob. The act of releasing the good Cooper from the Lodge is in itself a defeat for Bob.